Coca-Cola Amatil Supply Chain is developing knowledge sharing using Communities of Practice (COP). It’s six months since our first COP was formally launched, in Maintenance and Engineering, and shortly after this for our Systems Super Users and Key Users. As we are starting to develop our 2016 business plans and budgets this is a good time to consider progress, benefits and next steps.

We set up a single Maintenance and Engineering COP and invited all maintenance and engineering team members in Australia and New Zealand to participate – around 200 people. In the Systems area we launched three COPs – one for each operational system in scope, approximately 50 people in total. In both instances we launched these communities using a five week guided social learning program (Work, Connect and Learn – WCL) to develop skills and behaviours to participate in the COP. We ran WCL initially for the entire Maintenance and Engineering community, and then separately for the Systems communities. I shall post separately on evaluation of the WCL program.

The three crucial COP characteristics (as defined by Wenger-Trayner ) of domain, community and practice were used to identify factors impacting COP maturity – as shown in the table below.

Examples of value creation were identified in the Maintenance & Engineering and SAP Manufacturing COPs in particular, including:

Streamlining of processes

Sharing resources for troubleshooting

Cross-site input on problem resolution

Sharing improvements / lessons learned

Case studies and examples of successful COPs within organisations in similar industries and environments (manufacturing, engineering and technically oriented settings) were identified and reviewed (view curated articles). Lessons drawn from these case studies and our experience include:

Carefully define the domain and purpose of COP – keep it narrow enough to be attainable

Form strategically designed COPs aligned to business goals, set tangible outcomes, and find ways to integrate activities with work (e.g. link to projects, build activities into work flow), support and guide them closely

Provide guidelines and a lighter touch for other COPs that form

Provide guidance and support to help people access and interact in COPs

Make sure that interesting content is available

Enable Subject Matter Experts to become COP champions

Generate active senior management support

Most importantly, it is clear that value created by COPs can take considerable time to materialise. The key insight is that to generate tangible performance improvements you need to put effort and resource into community management. Accordingly, a key review recommendation is the appointment of a dedicated Community Manager.

Next steps identified are:

Create community strategies and road maps to build existing COPs.

Advocate for creation of the Community Manager role

When the Community Manager role is established (assuming it is), identify and design focused cross-functional COPs aligned with business processes with high impact on priority goals in our business strategy

The 702010 Forum recently launched a 70:20:10 Practitioner Certification program (watch a video overview). I participated in the pilot of this program last year and see tremendous value in the way it supports me to improve the application of the 702010 framework in my organisation, while also recognising my development as I do my work. There is real integrity in the 702010 approach that is built into the certification.

I’ve decided to post my certification pathway and progress reviews on my blog rather than just on the 702010 Forum so that I can share it more widely. In this post I share how I have scoped my work requirements and certification pathway. Participants are asked to apply a performance analysis approach to the scoping step, which is then used to structure this initial post.

Overview of Situation

Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) produces and distributes a range of beverages and some food items including carbonated soft drinks, fruit juices, water, dairy drinks, alcoholic beverages, fruit, coffee and tea. In early 2012 CCA established the Supply Chain Technical Academy. After a number of years of capital investment, a need was identified to ensure that we could continue to develop the capability of our people to use these platforms and systems. The Academy developed competency-based blended learning programs. These programs include theory (10), learning from others (20), and learning from experience (70). The three elements were included in structured programs, culminating in skill assessment on-the-job.

By early 2014 the Academy had largely delivered on the initial mandate of developing training programs to support the major capital investment program, which had come to an end. CCA’s market conditions had become tougher and profitability was reducing. Supply Chain’s business strategy had been updated, shifting focus to productivity in order to realise the benefits of the capital investment program. It was time to refresh our Capability strategy.

I had joined the 702010 Forum in September 2013 and became aware of how many different ways there are to support social and experiential learning. It struck me that CCA had narrowly interpreted the 702010 framework, and were missing many valuable, lower cost opportunities to support learning and improve our business results.

While I commenced individual 702010 certification as part of the Forum’s pilot in September 2014, I have used the Forum to support development and execution of the refreshed strategy described in this journal post.

Who is Involved?

Sponsor – My manager, the Head of People and Productivity – Supply Chain, is sponsoring my certification.

Stakeholders:

A Supply Chain Technical Capability Governance Board was established in mid 2012. The Board consists of a range of senior National and State managers. It sets and oversees Capability strategy. The Board helps me to align capability activities to business strategy and priorities.

National and State managers of functions such as manufacturing, maintenance and logistics – The Capability strategy must help them to improve their team’s business results. I work with them to develop specific learning programs that suit their team’s characteristics and working environment.

Capability Community – This group are both stakeholders in my certification and support in that they are co-contributors to the work that is in certification scope.

Academy team – five people in addition to myself, who develop and coordinate national learning programs.

Additional ‘Capability Consultants’ – people who take a lead role on development of specific Capability, but are not a permanent part of the Academy team.

State Capability Managers – one per Australian State (geographically structured role). These roles report to State Supply Chain Managers. They plan and execute technical and compliance training locally using a mixture of Academy and other programs. They are key local change and communication agents for the Academy.

Indirect Support – I shall work with IT and HR on specific initiatives. I shall also use my external Personal Learning Network for support. I may also engage external specialists to assist with specific initiatives.

Current Performance

The business context in early 2014 was introduced at start of this post. Key business performance factors were:

– Reducing business profitability due to changing market conditions, with a negative impact on share price.

– Business cost reductions, reducing workforce size.

– Completion of a multi-year program of investment in a range of Supply Chain platforms and computer systems.

Capability performance was reflected in a SWOT analysis undertaken in March 2014. I conducted individual discussions with the Governance Board members and Capability Managers gathered input from functional managers in their States. The SWOT was finalised at a 2 day Capability Community strategy workshop.

In summary, we had embedded a new consistent, clear model of competency-based Capability development aligned with business priorities, and the Community had earned credibility in the business. This has been a significant shift from the previous model where each State independently developed technical capability. Managers across Supply Chain told us that we had focussed on the right capabilities, and they felt that the programs met their needs. However, activity metrics showed that utilisation of formal programs was low. Engagement of local teams with Capability needed to improve in most States. We were also concerned that knowledge sharing across States was low.

Performance Outcomes to be achieved:

The Supply Chain business strategy was updated in late 2013 and emphasises productivity. Specific 3-year stretch targets have been set in the following business KPIs:

– use more responsive learning strategies. While the competency-based programs provide a foundation by sustaining critical core technical skills and knowledge, they do not enable continuous learning while working. They also require a lot of resource and time to develop.

Implications of Doing Nothing

Our Capability Strategy clearly needed to be refreshed to maintain alignment with the business strategy. To continue developing capability-based learning programs would mean that we invest a lot of resource in increasingly lower priority business capabilities. We simply could not keep up with business needs and risked becoming irrelevant.

Key Activities or Solutions

The refreshed Capability Strategy contains five elements as per the diagram below.

The strategy, endorsed by the Governance Board, states that we will focus on:

1. Continuing to develop and drive utilisation of evidence based programs for key capabilities

We have a three year road map of key initiatives for each element by year.

I shall focus on knowledge sharing as part of building a continuous learning culture for my 702010 Certification. This includes Communities of Practice and other forms of embedding and extracting learning through knowledge sharing. However, I shall also use the 702010 Forum resources and community to support other activities included in the strategy.

Action Plan

Following development of the strategy my next steps in regard to building knowledge sharing were to:

– Improve SharePoint infrastructure so that it could be used effectively for knowledge sharing.

– Engage and enable the Capability Community to support knowledge sharing by other groups in the business.

Below is an infographic illustrating our journey at Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) in the development of the Blow Fill learning solution. The program uses the 70:20:10 framework which allowed us to successfully integrate a formal training program with on-the-job work experience. This info graphic was developed by Justine Jardine and Becky Peters.